According to this story, Apple has secured (again) the rights to the name iPad in the Chinese market.

What a flipping bargain! It sure seems that Apple’s lawyers earned their salaries on this one. $60M is a small price to pay for the ability to sell iPad’s into China. With the size of that market, Apple will be able to continue its world wide growth for some time.

It brings up a feeling of deja vu for me – I was working at Creative Labs when Apple settled a patent lawsuit with them. Creative Labs had a patent on the scrolling menu system that was used on iPods. (I think it is the same version still being used on current generation iPods.)

The Creative Labs settlement cleared the way for Apple to continue to dominate the personal audio market. The feeling at Creative was one of vindication and pride on being “right.” We really felt that we had stuck it to the Big Bad Apple. Unfortunately, being right didn’t sell any additional Zen players.

If I remember correctly, the fiscal quarter that saw the money arrive from Apple was our only positive quarter in the previous 4-5 quarters. It didn’t get any better after that as future quarters saw us loosing money also.

I left Creative Labs not too long after that, but will always remember the feeling of false hope that the settlement brought…

I’m happy to announce a new web site for my new company – The Retail Specialists. I am going to take my passion for selling to retail and start helping other people achieve their dreams of seeing their products on the retail shelves. On that blog I will share more ideas specifically on retail, selling, technology, etc. This blog will become more general and include topics on golf, sports, fitness, and random stuff that catches my eye. So, if are all work and no play, please click here to get on over there. You can follow that blog on email, twitter, or RSS, just like this site.

In the article, the author talks about the work of Sociable Labs and their new product for e-commerce sites. The product allows consumers to recommend a site or product to friends.

The San Mateo, California, startup offers a suite of social applications that can be incorporated right on a retailer’s e-commerce site. The main thing Sociable does, founder Nisan Gabbay tells Fast Company, is to help retailers focus on maximizing sales through social media, not just buzz-building. This can happen more effectively, Gabbay says, if a business gets out of the way of conversations between friends, which are happening on Facbeook (and elsewhere).

I think this could be something cool as it takes the third party (i.e.: Facebook) out of the picture which allows real conversations between people to happen, not just a shout out on a ‘wall’ or ‘timeline’. It also, and this is more important in my opinion, allows the efforts to be measured, compared, and evaluated. A must have piece of the social media storm that has been missing so far.

What do you think? Would you tell your friends about a product or site you’ve found using this method?